Source: World Bank, Doing Business project.Note: Cost
measures the fees levied on an imported 20-foot container in
U.S. dollars (USD). They include costs for documents,
administrative fees for customs clearance and technical control,
customs broker fees, terminal handling charges and inland
transport. The cost measure does not include tariffs or trade
taxes as well as maritime shipping costs.(Detailed
PDF Map)Cost to Import a 20 Foot Container, 2012Ideally, transportation costs should experience of form a
convergence as containerized transport systems become for
extensive and ubiquitous. Since the container has become the
most common transport unit in international trade, the costs of
handling them across jurisdictions is representative of the ease
of trade. The World Bank has developed a methodology enabling to
compare the costs of importing and exporting the same load unit
(a 20 foot container equivalent to one TEU) across most of the
world's countries. Thus, lowering import and export costs per
TEU can be reflective of trade facilitation. There are substantial variations across nations in the cost
of importing the same load unit. The main factors behind these
differences are:

Geography. Basic geographical factors are
at play. Countries having a long coastline and a large share
of their population living close to the coast tend to have
lower containerized import costs (e.g. Chile). In such as
case, the average inland transport distance tends to be low.
The same rationale applies to archipelago and island
countries (Indonesia, Philippines, Caribbean). Large
countries having a good share of their populations living
inland also tend to have higher import costs (e.g. Russia,
United States, Canada, Mexico). Landlocked countries have
systematically higher import costs because of the additional
costs and complexity of importing containers through a third
party gateway. Interestingly, Latin American landlocked
countries (Bolivia and Paraguay) are the exception to this
rule indicating notable efforts to maintain effective
gateways to global trade.

Efficiency of inland transportation.
Countries having a high capacity rail system and/or a
fluvial system are associated with lower transport costs.
Many landlocked countries, in addition to their isolation,
are usually not well connected to the gateways through which
they have access to global markets. This is particularly the
case for sub-Saharan African and Central Asian countries
where the highest import costs for containerized cargo are
observed.

Policy and regulations. Some countries
purposely impose high transaction costs as a source of
revenue. Countries that have implemented trade facilitation
strategies, particularly major infrastructure investments
are prone to have lower costs. Inversely, situations of
political instability and insecurity substantially add to
transport costs. Corruption and
rent seeking behavior
are commonly linked with political instability.

Trade imbalances. Trade imbalances are
linked with
container flow imbalances, which impose surcharges for
imports if they are substantially higher than exports or
surcharges for exports if they are higher than imports.
These surcharges cover the costs of repositioning containers
from areas where there is a surplus to areas where there is
a deficit. For instance, due to imbalances it is common that
container shipping rates from Asia to North America to be
twice as high for the inbound trip.

It is however difficult to separate the contribution of
each factor to import costs. On average import costs per TEU
are higher than export costs since most countries implicitly
favor exports over imports since it is a tool supporting
national industries. OECD
countries have import costs 38% less than the global average,
while this figure is 51% less for East Asian countries, which is
the region having the world's lowest import costs.
Inversely, landlocked countries
have import costs 85% higher than the global average.